Cary D. Wintz

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Biography

Cary D. Wintz is widely known as an academic historian and author who specializes in African American History, especially the Harlem Renaissance, and racial and political ideology in the early 20th century. His most recent book, which was published in early 2012, is The Harlem Renaissance in the American West. He is the author or editor of over a dozen other books, including Black Dixie: Essays on Afro-Texan History and Culture in Houston (1992), Black Culture and the Harlem Renaissance (1988), African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph, (1996), a seven volume series on the Harlem Renaissance (1996); he also co-authored two books on Texas history, Texas: The Lone Star State, (2004), and Major Problems in Texas History (2002), and, with Paul Finkelman, he co-edited the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2004); other recent works include an edited, abridged edition of Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman (2001) and The Harlem Renaissance: A History and Anthology (2003). He also was an editor of the Oxford University Press’ Encyclopedia of African American History, (2006, 2009).

Cary De Cordova Wintz was born on February 12, 1943 in Houston, Texas. He received his B.A. degree in History from Rice University in 1965. He then went to Kansas for his graduate work, receiving an M.A. in history and a Ph.D. in history from Kansas State University, where he studied under historian and biographer Stephen Ambrose. Dr. Wintz returned to Houston in 1971 to accept a position on the faculty of Texas Southern University. He currently holds the rank of Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Geography.

Dr. Wintz is a member of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Southern Historical Association and several other professional organizations. He is a member of Phi Alpha Theta Honorary Society, and received the Texas Southern University Distinguished Service Award (1988), the Advanced Placement Special Recognition Award (1993), and the Texas Southern University Research Scholar of the Year Award (1996).

He is currently working on several book projects, including new editions of Texas: The Lone Star State, Major Problems in Texas Histort, African American Political Thought. He is also working on a new encyclopedia project. Dr. Wintz has presented more than fifty papers at professional meetings, he has delivered numerous speeches and public addresses, in the Houston area, throughout the United States, and abroad, and he has been interviewed frequently in the press, on radio, and on television.

Dr. Wintz has served as historical consultant for several television documentaries dealing with the history of Houston and for a feature length film documentary on the history of Houston's Riverside community. He has received five grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities; in the most recent of these he directed a Summer Seminar for School Teachers on “The Autobiographies of the Harlem Renaissance” at Texas Southern University in July 1998. He has traveled extensively in Mexico, South America, East and South Asia, Egypt, Turkey, and West Africa; he spent six weeks in Korea in the summer of 1983 on a Fulbright-Hays project, and served as a lecturer for the United States Information Service in the Philippines in January 1985, and in India in January 1990, and for the U.S. embassy in Turkey in 2006, 2007, and 2008. He has served on many grant review panels for the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Department of Education, and the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Dr. Wintz has also served as President of the Houston Center of the Humanities, the Southwestern Social Science Association, and the East Texas Historical Association, and served three terms as commissioner and as chair of the Houston Archeological and Historical Commission. He also currently serves on the editorial board of Social Science Quarterly, the Houston Review, and Africana Studies.

Selected Works

This collection of original essays explores the long hisory of African American candidates for the presidency or vice-presidency. Each chapter takes the story one step further, culminating with Barack Obama's victory in 2008, (with Bruce Glasrud).

An amazing collection of essays that that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of an area of creativity and change that is usually seen through the lens of New York by recasting ourscholarly sights westward, (with Bruce Glasrud).